- US bonds are suffering their worst-ever rout, according to data from Bank of America.
- "It's the greatest bond bear market of all time," strategists said in a Friday research note.
The ongoing Treasury rout ranks as the deepest bond bear market in the 247-year history of the US, according to Bank of America.
In a research note published Friday, the bank put together a list of the biggest fixed-income sell-offs ever – and found the market's dismal stretch since its peak in July 2020 represented its worst-ever run.
"It's the greatest bond bear market of all time," a team of strategists led by Michael Hartnett said.
The slumping asset class could become attractive to investors in 2024 with bonds a contender to become the year's "buy the humiliation" trade, they added.
Bond prices have plummeted over the past few weeks with investors fretting that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates high well into 2024 in order to kill off inflation.
That's turned a rough stretch for debt into a rout that rivals some of the US's biggest-ever stock-market crashes, including the dot-com bubble popping and the 2008 financial crisis.
30-year Treasury bond prices have now plunged over 50% peak-to-trough, according to Bank of America, after yields hit 5% for the first time since 2007 last week.
It's unclear how accurate the bank's figures are – because bond markets tended to be much less liquid before the turn of the 20th century, making the available data patchy at best.
This is the second time in a fortnight that Hartnett's team have used historical data to assess the state of today's market, after they pointed out two weeks ago that central banks had lifted interest rates away from "5,000-year lows" over the past 18 months.